Top 5 Makeup Artist Special Effects Tips – How To Create Sweat Using Glycerin

I have experimented with a range of techniques on how to create sweat and I always go back to using glycerin and water. It’s an old technique and I find that as a special effects make up artist in Manchester working on photo shoots, it’s the most effective, here are my top 5 tips!

1. Ensure that you do a patch test on your model as some people find that glycerin can become tingly or cause a skin reaction (redness/numb). Ideally you would do this 24hrs before you were due to apply it.
2. Mix the same amount of water and glycerin together, ie. 1 tablespoon glycerin and 1 tablespoon water.
3. If you are creating the effect of sweat all over the body, you can mix it in a spray bottle. However I like to use a make up sponge as I have more control over where i am applying it

4. Test the effect of it to get the right consistency, it should be thick enough to look like droplets of rain and when you squeeze the make up sponge it should still be light enough to drip down the face
5. If your model starts to react switch to using baby oil or vaseline as a second best alternative

You can see from the image how the effect can look. For more information on glycerin click here, thanks for reading!